The Liberation Day Tapes – Jihad Seeds

In this final episode of The Liberation Day Tapes we take on Jihad Seeds, the second song on RICANSTRUCTION‘s album Liberation Day. Although Liberation Day was a concept album centered on the Puerto Rican liberation struggle, Jihad Seeds didn’t directly or overtly relate to the Puerto Rican liberation struggle. A few of the songs on the album didn’t directly associate to the struggle for Puerto Rican liberation (both on the island and in the diaspora) but they all held a kind of indirect association to that struggle. Jihad Seeds was no different.

The word Jihad in Arabic or Muslim circles is a much more complex and nuanced word than it’s narrow western definition of simply meaning “Holy War”. The word Jihad in Arabic and among Muslim’s means “to struggle” or “to strive” or “to exert” or “to fight”. In the Holy Quran the Prophet Mohammad describes the military struggle to defend Islam as “jihad” but he goes on to explain that this physical struggle, this “holy war” is “the little jihad”. The Prophet Mohammed in the Quran also makes the distinction that the internal spiritual struggle with oneself to remain righteous was the greater struggle – “the great jihad”.

i think that RICANSTRUCTION’s Jihad Seeds is using both “the little jihad” of the “holy war” and “the great jihad” of the spiritual struggle and exploring how the two can be interrelated. The nature of that interrelation between “the little jihad” of fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico juxtaposed against “the great jihad” of the internal struggle to decolonize ones mind, body and spirit was something that fit perfectly into the themes i was struggling to express in MACHETERO.